RuKsaK

People decorate rooms in themselves. My living room is a half-portrait of my life, the dust under the TV stand reminding me what I don’t like in myself, the Sri Lankan mask screaming colours at visitors tells them where to sit. An innocuous picture on a wall, the depth of an ashtray, degrees of cleanliness around a sink are all mad parts of a map, showing you the expectations, the ways to behave on routes which are not yours. A cushion slung backwards, the dust swelling from a gnarly sofa, a wooden shed stuffed with old bicycles are speakers of huge historical volumes on rules of behaviour – rooms are fast teachers to anyone walking into them.
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Stink left home without a single thought to glance backwards. He’d learned enough.
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There are few dozen streets in my home town which are made to look narrower by the four-floor buildings that edge them. Most of them are hotels, guesthouses of varying levels of pleasantness. At the bottom of the pile is Sheriff Avenue - haphazard scruffy colours, concrete gardens and peeling signs with one of the saddest words I know written on them: ‘vacancies’.
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In the 1980s, with unemployment swinging an axe at those leaving school, these houses became hoarders of the jobless. The government would pay enough to keep people in one of these places, fed and roofed to a uniform level of depression. At seventeen-years-old you couldn’t move to such a place, and get the government money, without parental consent. Stink and his mother had a rare exchange:
‘Mum – I want to move out.’
‘Bloody go – nobody’s stopping you.’
‘Well, I haven’t got a job, so I can’t afford it, unless…’
‘Is that my fucking fault you little bastard? Who wants to employ a young bloody criminal anyway?’
‘Mum – if you sign this form I can get money from the unemployment office.’
‘Money for what?’
‘For a place to live.’
‘Well, fuck me – let me sign it and you can be on your merry fucking way then, can’t you son?’

She didn’t even take time to read it and within two days Stink was the youngest from a dozen jobless living in a squeezed guest house on Sheriff Avenue. Stink was perfect for the house’s story – he had no care for the cold, emotionless sheets on his bed, or the mould-catching wallpaper. Sharing a bathroom with six others never bothered him – he had time to wait for a bath. He never noticed the smell of the thousands who’d stayed in the place, just as all the people living there didn’t. That’s why they were there – slouching into their very special happinesses.

The other guests took pride in initiating Stink, sharing their well-numbered alcohol with him, showing how to smoke marijuana without wasting a single wisp of smoke. Each evening was spent with him forgetting how he’d got to his bed, but still waking without any disorientation – mainly because he couldn’t care less. Only his body registered any change to his location – his head didn’t give a single fuck.

After about three weeks Stink woke up one night in a manner which shook him though. He opened his eyes to feel his body being peeled down and placed on a colder, harder surface than his bed. He looked up and saw a huge man in a yellow hat.
‘Just rest here son. Someone will see to you in a minute.’

Stink responded with a bilious cough which flew hot phlegm onto his bare chest. He realised he was lying on the pavement. He lifted his neck and looked ahead. He didn’t get it at first, there was something strange. It felt like the first time he’d looked at the building he was living in. In fact, it was the first time he’d looked at it, but something was wrong. It took him several minutes, inside the commotion, to realise that the orange light fighting at the windows was fire. He didn’t think for his clothes burning, or the twelve pounds he had for lasting ten days in his jeans pocket.
‘I can’t go home.’ He thought.
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Go to Stink and the suicides - part 11 here, if you're still with me.

Monday, May 16, 2005

Stink and the suicides - part 10